SteamVR In Open Beta For Oculus Rift Users

Valve has unofficially released SteamVR in the wild, as verified independently by both a Steam user and an actual Valve employee on their official forums.

A fan has noted that when you add “-ir” to the command line at Steam’s startup screen, and then press the Big Picture button, you can switch from Steam Big Picture mode directly into this mode. People who also have the Oculus Rift dev kit can already try it out.

Valve’s Joe Ludwig came out with additional instructions on how to ensure you get it running. Basically, you just have to check that SteamVR is under your Tools, and install it if not. People who opted into the Half-Life 2 beta should be able to play around with it on that game, as well as TF2. Joe’s forum post is also a repository for feedback, and so it was immediately filled out with 95 comments, a quick thread of feedback and fixes.

You have to imagine Sony’s hardware folks (among others) are already on top of this, and not necessarily for malicious reasons. Steam is making no bones about making SteamVR’s beta testing process public, and it’s a great opportunity for colleagues to observe and pick up free lessons before they try out similar technologies with the public. Heck, Steam is doing just that with their independent VR project.

Joe also notes that he will be talking about SteamVR, including some early issues, on an upcoming Steam Developer Day talk on Thursday. The rest of us who don’t have the knowhow or actual Oculus VR units will just have to watch, but by God, it’s exciting to see VR reach this stage.